Visitors will entertain the people of Mizuho in a special talent show

Published in the June 25-July 8, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life

By Staff Report

Photo by Marty Cheek
 Chloe Little plays percussion on a plastic cup during a talent show to raise money for a trip to Japan.

Seven Morgan Hill school students are preparing for what will be one of the biggest adventures in their young lives — a trip to Japan in July. For 10 days, they will explore the Tokyo region and meet people in the community of Mizuho, one of Morgan Hill’s five Sister Cities.

During the trip, the students will entertain the people of Mizuho by performing in a special talent show at a local community center. Among the American students is Chloe Little who will play music using a plastic cup to keep the beat to a recorded song.

“I look forward to meeting new people and making new friends because I want to create new friends and stay in touch with them,” Little said. “It’s probably going to be really different than here and I’m excited to go there.”

Although she doesn’t yet know much about the culture, she is aware she and her fellow travelers will need to learn special etiquette in respect to their hosts. “We have to bring two pairs of slippers for different places in the house,” she said as an example of one cultural difference compared to America.

Photo by Marty Cheek
Dancers perform as part of the talent show.

Chloe’s brother David Little will perform magic tricks during the talent show in Japan. He looks forward to the trip and sees it as an opportunity to learn how people of the island nation really are like and break some of the stereotypes many Americans have of the Japanese.

“Japan is like a completely different place,” he said. “We have stereotypes of what the journals tell you and the newspapers tell you so you get little bits of it. I think the most exciting thing is looking at (Japan’s) past and how it developed and how it got so polite, how it got so clean, how they decided to get ahead in technology.”

The trip to Japan will be Morgan Hill resident Lainie Moniz’s first trip outside of the United States. With experience acting and singing in musicals produced by the South Valley Civic Theater and other stage groups, she will perform the song “Part of Your World” from the Disney movie “The Little Mermaid.”

“I’m really looking forward to just being there because I really like Japanese culture — so kind of like everything about it is awesome, I think,” she said. “I think it’ll be like really cool and I’ve always been interested in it.”

Moniz has been studying the history of Japan as well as learning about their culture by watching anime cartoons.

Morgan Hill resident Nia Lyn will read Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping in the Woods” in English and Japanese to entertain her hosts at the Mizuho talent show. She has memorized the poem in English but not in Japanese. She’s interested in seeing how education might be different in Japan compared to American schools.

“It’s going to be hot, really hot,” Lyn said. “I’m going to look forward to seeing things in Tokyo and going to the schools because I want to see how their schools work. I know how ours work but theirs work way differently. I don’t know yet how, but I’ll find out.”

Britton Middle School student Rosa Quiroz has traveled abroad previously in South America and she plans to be an exchange student in Turkey. Her talent show performance for the Sister City hosts in Japan will be reading a poem called “Poem of the Atoms” in Farsi by the Persian poet Rumi.

Quiroz and the other students have been busy learning the rules of behavior as well as common Japanese words and phrases so they can communicate with people during the trip, she said.

“We’re going to have an etiquette class and we’re learning Japanese so we can interact with the people,” she said.

Mizuho has a population of about 35,000 people. It is located in the Nishitama District of the Tokyo metropolis area. It was founded in Nov. 10, 1940 after the merger of four villages.

How to donate

Call Victoria at (408) 427-2541 to donate or for additional information.